The Novel
A Bonnie Jo Campbell Reading
Keeping It Real By Cheryl Olsen If you’re here for a review, keep moving. I haven’t read Once Upon a River. Yet. But I will, after the author’s reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera last night. Bonnie Jo Campbell is just so darn unguarded and appealing, it’s impossible not to want to spend more time [...]
Excerpt from Jennie Fields’ New Novel
Jennie‘s fourth novel, The Age of Desire (based on writer Edith Wharton’s life), won’t be released until August, but we couldn’t bear to wait that long! In this scene, Anna Bahlmann, Edith’s secretary and confidant tells her some shocking news she’s heard about Edith’s lover, Morton Fullerton. Anna stands in front of Edith at her [...]
Writer Interrupted
The Death of William Gay By Ross Howell Ross Howell followed a career in academic fund-raising, public relations, book publishing, and marketing after receiving his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. He’s now freelancing non-fiction and fiction, and teaching at Elon University. He lives in Greensboro, NC, with his wife, Mary Leigh, English [...]
Yet More on Great American Novel
Are You Up to the Challenge? Ok, writers and readers, clearly the gauntlet has been proffered and it’s time to fight back with some words of our own. In his Weekly Standard article on The Great American Novel (GAN), Roger Kimball insists, “The novel plays a different and a diminished role in our cultural life as [...]
More on Great American Novel
Continuing the Conversation By Dick Cummins Prompted by Eric’s guest post on Portland Book Review’s Writers on Writing blog, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad Dick Cummins continues the Great American Novel debate. Here’s what you get for poking the word bears. When I used to hear the term “Great American Novel,” I just thought [...]
Vance Bourjaily Remembered
Writing in the Wilderness By Geri Lipschultz “You know, you’re a good writer,” Vance said. I was hanging on that. He went on a little, about how good I was. I forget that part. It was a long time ago, but this conversation has its place in my arsenal. For some reason that I could [...]
2011 National Book Festival
Two links to cool stuff: 1. Excerpts from interviews of writers at the September 24 – 25 National Book Festival on the National Mall 2. Other stuff about the festival, including a video of Clint Eastwood in the Library of Congress Plus the warm fuzzies you’ll get from realizing READING and WRITING are still important [...]
What Do Publishers Want?
Jumping Through Hoops By Ross Howell Recently my mother-in-law’s neighbor phoned me after he learned that I had studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He had completed a first novel, had gotten a response from an agent, and wanted to know what to do next. “There seem to be so many hoops to jump through,” [...]
Paul Harding Video Part 2
More on how Tinkers evolved from characters based on Harding’s family, as well as the purely imagined. It’s all about character, he assures us. Even the setting is a character.
Paul Harding Video Part 1
In this interview conducted at his alma mater, the Pulitzer, PEN/Robert Bingham, and Guggenheim fellowship winner discusses the debut novel that put him on the map. Tinkers was famously rejected by major houses before being published by tiny Bellevue Literary Press.
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